Here are a few highlights for ADI’s work around the world for the past month. With your help we are changing lives around the world.
ADI founded International Primate Day on September 1st in 2005 to highlight the suffering of primates and it is now marked all over the world. Our campaign has had some major breakthroughs since then including ending the use of chimpanzees and wild-caught monkeys in EU and UK labs, airport awareness drives in Peru discouraging people from purchasing primates and trafficked animals as pets; the rescue, rehoming and return to the wild of dozens of monkeys rescued from circuses, laboratories, restaurants and traffickers. There is still much to do as primates continue to suffer but with your help we are turning the tide. Right now, in the US we are calling for support of the Captive Primate Safety Act, to ban public contact with and the keeping of primates such as apes, gibbons, monkeys and lorises as pets, as well as ban foreign and interstate trade in these species.
If you live in the US, please urge your legislators to sponsor this act.
FIVE ANIMALS EXPERIMENTED ON IN BRITISH LABS EVERY MINUTE. 2.68 million procedures were performed on living animals in the UK according to the latest (2023) government statistics. 2.60 million animals were used in these experiments, including 75,588 animals who were experimented on more than once. This was the lowest number of experiments since 2001, yet still means on average 7,342 animal experiments every day, 305 per hour and 5 animals every minute, one animal experimented on every 12 seconds. ADI is raising several issues from the latest statistics with the Home Office.
ADI protested when Minnesota Renaissance Festival offered elephant, camel, pony, and llama rides throughout September. The brutal training of these animals has been exposed by ADI and at events, like renaissance fairs, these animals have a miserable existence with very limited space either tethered or in transporters. Please politely urge the festival to stop using performing animals at entertainment@renaissancefest.com.
ADI Colombia representative Yani Mateus addressed a special meeting, “Animal experiments, context and irregularities in Colombia”, held in the First Commission of the Colombian Senate in September. Magnolia Martinez from PETA also spoke at the event moderated by Javier González of the Observatorio Animalista. The meeting considered not only the suffering of animals in labs but why animal experiments are outdated and bad science. Following an ADI campaign, Colombia banned animal tests for cosmetics and their ingredients and included measures in the legislation that should help drive forward implementation of non-animal methods.
A huge THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to our appeal for a new platform den in Tohir Habitat for the Cusco family and important maintenance including painting the fence for this huge enclosure. Initial plans to fix the platform, damaged by the heavyweight family leaping onto it over the years, were abandoned when we discovered a colony of bees had made a home there. It was part dismantled, and now we have a new platform AND a home for the bees.
GOOD NEWS: In the UK, eleven trail hunting permits on Ministry of Defence land have been suspended, indefinitely, by the new government. Since hunting was banned over 20 years ago, hunts have used trail hunting as cover to continue hunting live foxes. ADI hopes this suspension will be made permanent and, as part of the Time for Change Coalition Against Hunting, continue to press for loopholes in the 2004 Hunting Act to be closed. In the UK, please help, write, call, speak with your MP (find their details here) and ask them to support the end of foxhunting for good!
In the early hours of one morning, a fire was caused by a vehicle accident on a road running close to the sanctuary. Our night security patrol spotted it and scrambled the sanctuary. Our firefighters raced to the scene and animals were brought into their safe zones. The fire was quickly extinguished. This is the most dangerous time of the year for wildfires as it is the end of the dry season. It was a reminder of how we must be prepared to mobilise quickly and how important an addition the new electric vehicles will be to the sanctuary – see later.
A UK man gets 20 month jail sentence after posting baby monkey torture videos on Facebook. The prosecution was brought under the Obscene Publications Act rather than the new Online Safety Act. ADI and the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC) are calling for the latter to be used to crack down on promotion of cruelty videos online, including the surge in fake rescues where animals are deliberately put in danger to generate views and income. Wherever you live, you can help stop these videos:
1) Don’t watch online animal cruelty content, including fake rescues;
2) Don’t engage with such posts, even to express outrage or draw attention to these videos – this will only boost reach and revenue;
3) Report content to the social media platform, and to SMACC.
Native wildlife has exploded at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary since we began re-wilding. We have planted over 200 trees, allowed the flowers to flourish, and added over 50 natural spring fed water sources. Little wonder there is an abundance of birdlife these days, including the endangered secretary bird. A large bird of prey with eagle-like head and stork-like legs, it is a thrill to see them walking through the long grass at the Sanctuary. We look forward to sharing new wildlife sightings with you!
It has been nearly 10 years since we rescued 4-month-old baby woolly monkey, Fausto. He was illegally captured and trafficked to a restaurant, where ADI rescued him, taking him to Pilpintuwasi sanctuary in the Peruvian Amazon. ADI funds Fausto’s lifelong care, recently paying for repairs to our monkey facilities there. When you support our work, you’re also helping us to care for our rescued animals in Peru – not just those at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary.
YOU DID IT! OUR FIRST TWO GREEN MACHINES HAVE BEEN ORDERED: A huge thank you to everyone who contributed towards fully electric Blitz Cruisers to work on the sanctuary. We purchased the first two and are continuing to raise funds to complete our fleet of four! These will really increase mobility on the sanctuary making all of our operations from feeding to repairs more efficient, enabling us to do more for the animals, and keep us moving towards our goal of a sustainable, eco-friendly sanctuary. These green machines will be quiet around the animals, free of emissions, and free to fuel (self-charging with a solar panel roof or charged through the sanctuary’s own solar power station. You can continue donating for the final cruisers here UK I US
To help support our campaigns, rescue and sanctuary work:
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Jan Creamer 